David Amram -- who was a major figure in the early Beat movement -- has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works; written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including the classic scores for the films Splendor in The Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; two operas, including the groundbreaking Holocaust opera, The Final Ingredient; and the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of three books: Vibrations, an autobiography; Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac, a memoir; and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.

A pioneer player of jazz French horn, Amram is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments from 25 countries -- some of which he plays on this show. He has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein (who chose him as The New York Philharmonic's first composer-in-residence in 1966), Dizzy Gillespie, Langston Hughes, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Thelonious Monk, Odetta, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Depp, Tito Puente, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

The Austin Civic Orchestra produced the Texas premiere of This Land is Our Land, David Amram’s folk-inspired Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie that was commissioned by the Woody Guthrie Foundation.

Host and Producer of Rag Radio: Thorne Dreyer; Engineer and Co-Producer: Tracey Schulz. Rag Radio (koop.org/ragradio) is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer, cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog (theragblog.blogspot.com) and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The show is broadcast (and streamed) live Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern). Contact: ragradio@koop.org. Running time: 57:10.


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Artist/Composer: Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer
Date: 2012-09-28
Keywords: Rag Radio; David Amram; Jazz Musicians; Beat Movement; Jack Kerouac; Woody Guthrie

Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States

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